ESL Saigon

Ao Dai Museum, Saigon

For those who don’t know, ao dai is the name given to Vietnamese national costume, and yes, there is a private museum in Saigon dedicated to ao dai. I had opportunity to visit this place, located about one hour by taxi from the city center and I was really impressed.

The museum’s collection contains ao dai costumes from the 17th to 21st century and an impressive collection of traditional Vietnamese hats.

Although the museum itself is an interesting place, what impressed me the most is the beauty of the location. Extremely clean and quiet place, the museum yard was the real attraction for me, and for the others as well.

Everything is built around a big lake. There is an island in the middle of the lake and a small traditional pagoda.

Relaxing places are all over the yard and everything is built from wood and stone, giving the place very strong rustic accents.

Although there is no restaurant throughout the place, you can buy a drink from a small cafe and enjoy it wherever you want inside the yard.

There isn’t a playground for kids, but they aren’t neglected neither. There are several games and activities for them that can be played freely.

But that’s not all about this location. The museum offers different services besides museum itself: a 200 seat conference room, meditation instructions, a film studio, just to name few of them.

The extreme humidity and high temperature make us wish for a heavy rain, and we got what we wished for. The daily tropical rain started and we got trapped for almost two hours.

Despite the rain, which was a good thing, at the end, we had a very enjoyable day.